Teenager Paul Phillips has been locked up for more than eight years after he carried out a revenge attack that left a man with a stab wound.

The 19-year-old and his accomplice armed themselves before bursting into the home of his victim – who was with his disabled partner and two children – and subjecting him to a terrifying assault.

Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court heard Phillips instigated the attack because the victim had been convicted of stealing from Phillips’s mother.

The defendant has now been sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in a young offenders' institution for the crime – plus a further 10 months for having sex with a 14-year-old girl, when he was 17.

The court heard Phillips and his accomplice – who has never been identified – were wearing hoods with scarves covering their faces when they went to the victim’s home in Heathcote Street, Longton, on July 7.

Paul Phillips,aged 19, from Fenton, was sentenced to eight years and four months at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court

Prosecutor Jonathan Dickinson said: “At 10.45pm, while the family was at home, they heard the front door rattling. It had been left unlocked and when the complainant went to investigate he discovered two men in the doorway – one armed with a knife and the other a screwdriver.

“The complainant ran into the kitchen where his partner – who is disabled and in a wheelchair – was. He fell over the wheelchair and was then assaulted by both men, who punched and kicked him.

“He felt himself being stabbed by an object in his back. When he looked up he saw the man with the knife pointing it at his partner, who had fallen to the kitchen floor.

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In a statement read out in court, the victim’s partner said she had been terrified. She said: “I feared for my life and my children’s. I thought I was going to be badly hurt.

“I’m now afraid to be alone in the house, day or night, because of this.”

Phillips, of King Street, Fenton, at first denied the offence, but later pleaded guilty to aggravated burglary. He has not revealed the identity of the second offender and denied being the one who inflicted the stab wound.

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After police issued him with an abduction notice telling him not to go near the girl again, he met up with her for a second time and took her to his friend’s house in Congleton. Police later found the pair at Congleton Bus Station.

Joanne Wallbanks, mitigating, said Phillips had some mental health difficulties and was ‘very immature’. “These offences were unsophisticated,” she said. “With regard to the sexual offences he was always going to be traced from his messages, and he identified himself during the aggravated burglary.

“He had an unhappy family background and ended up in care, becoming involved with drugs and self-harm.”

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Sentencing Phillips, Judge David Fletcher said: “To go to someone’s house with someone else, armed with a knife and screwdriver, to break in and actively harm someone, in the presence of that person’s partner and children, is about as serious as it gets in terms of this type of offence.

“It was your grievance that resulted in this and you are charged on a joint enterprise basis – the fact that you may not have been the person who inflicted the wound does not mean that you are not equally responsible.”

An eight-year sexual harm prevention order, which will limit Phillips’s future contact with children, was imposed as a result of the sex offence, and he will be on the Sex Offenders Register for 10 years.